Читать книгу Our Little Irish Cousin - Wade Mary Hazelton Blanchard - Страница 3

"CAN you do it now?" said Norah, laughing.

"Can I do it? Yes, easy enough, for I've heard the riddle before. T-h-a-t. There, Norah, you didn't catch me this time."

Molly laughed, too, as she spoke, and the little girls went on dressing their rag dolls.

They were great friends, these two children of Ireland, and, although they were ragged and dirty most of the time, and neither of them owned hats or shoes, they were happy as the day is long. And, when I say this, I mean one of the longest days of Ireland, which are very long indeed.

Norah had beautiful blue eyes and dark auburn hair. Her teeth were like pearls and her cheeks were rosy as the brightest sunset.

"She is a true daughter of Erin," thought her mother, as she looked at the child. "May God will that she grow up to be as good as she is beautiful," she said to herself, making the sign of the cross on her breast.

As for Molly, Norah's little playmate, her hair was black as night. Many other lads and lasses of Ireland have hair like that. It is because, long years ago, before even the Christ-child dwelt among men, Spaniards came to the west coast of Ireland and settled among the people there.

They gave their black hair and dark eyes to the people already in the country, most of whom were fair in face, hair, and eyes. So it happens that sometimes they now have dark hair and blue eyes, and sometimes light hair and dark eyes.

"Norah! Norah, darlint! Come and feed the pigs," called her mother. "They are that hungry they would eat the thatch off the house if they could reach it."

Norah jumped up, and running home as fast as her young feet could carry her, took the dish of mush from her mother's hands. She was instantly surrounded by a thin old mother pig and her ten little ones.

They were cunning little things when they were born, and Norah loved to hold them in her arms and pet them. But they were big enough now to root about in the mud, and the little girl held them no longer.

"Oof! oof!" grunted the mother pig. "Good! good!" was what she meant, of course, as she swallowed her supper as quickly as possible, and the ten babies followed her example.

Then Norah had to feed the ducks and chickens, and her precious goat.

"I love it. Oh, I love it, next to father and mother and the children," thought the little girl.

"How much it knows, and how gentle it is! And what should we do without the sweet, rich milk it gives us!" she said, turning to Molly, who was helping her in her work.

"It is a dear little creature" (Molly pronounced it crayther), "but I love our pet cow better. I suppose the reason is because it is ours. But, good night till ye, Norah. I must be after getting home."

Molly went running down the lane, while Norah entered the house.

House! It would hardly be fair to give it such a grand name. It was a small stone hut, not much taller than Norah's father, with a roof covered with mud and straw mixed together. Such a roof is said to be thatched.

There was only one window in the hut, and that was a small one. The door was divided across the middle, and the upper part of it stood wide open. Yet, as Norah stepped inside, the air was thick and heavy with smoke.

Over in one corner was a fireplace, and in it cakes of dried peat were slowly burning. It was the only kind of fuel Norah's mother had to burn, so it was no wonder the air of the room was smoky.

Do you know what peat is? In Norah's country there are many square miles of marshy land covered with moss and grasses. If it could speak to us, this land would tell a wonderful story.

"Ages and ages ago," it would say, "great forests of oak stood here. The trees grew large and strong. But the rain fell often and the air was very damp. This is the reason mosses and other plants gathered on the trunks and branches of the trees. They sent their roots into the moist bark and fed on the sap that should have nourished the trees.

"The great trees became weaker and weaker as the years passed away, until at last they sickened and died, and fell to the ground.

"Fir-trees began to grow in the places of the oaks. But they were treated in the same manner. Their life-giving sap was taken by a new growth of mosses. The fir-trees died, and added to the great masses of decaying wood which now covered the damp ground.

"Then plants grew up. But they met with the same fate as the trees.

"Thousands and thousands of years passed by. The beautiful forests that once covered the land were slowly changed into peat."

The peat-bogs are now so thick and heavy that the poor of Ireland can dig twenty-five feet into them and cut out squares of the solid peat.

After drying them in the air and sunshine, the people burn them in place of coal. This queer fuel does not make as bright and clear a fire as coal, but it is cheap, and keeps the poor from suffering.

"Be patient and wait only a few more thousands of years," the bogs would say to us if they could, "and you may have coal instead of peat. Father Time will make the change without any work on your part."

But the people of Ireland cannot wait. Most of them are very, very poor. They live from day to day, glad if they have a roof to cover their heads and food enough to keep them from starving.

Norah's father hires the land for his little farm from a rich lord who lives most of the year in England. The Irishman built the little hut on this land for himself and wife, and his family of growing children.

"What use would it be to spend much time on it?" he would say. "The better I make the place, the more rent I shall have to pay."

Every year he planted his patch of potatoes and cabbages for himself, besides oats and turnips and other things for his fowls and pigs and goat. He mended the thatched roof when it leaked too badly for comfort, and they all tried to be happy. They succeeded pretty well.

When each new year came around, the home looked about as usual. It was no better, and no worse, unless, perhaps, it was a wee bit more shabby.

But the children grew fast. They were merry and rosy, and thought very little about the shabby stone hut they called "home."

"Sivin of us there are," Norah would tell you, "and baby Pat is the dearest and best of us all."

As she came in to supper that night, her mother lifted the kettle that hung by a hook over the smoky fire and made a pot of tea. Then she placed a dish of steaming potatoes and a plate of dark, heavy bread on the table.

"A good supper, indade," thought the hungry children, and in a few minutes not a sign of anything to eat could be seen.

"Here chick! chick!" called Norah, dropping crumbs to her pet chicken. It had kept close beside her during the meal, and once had grown so impatient that it flew up into the little girl's lap.

An old hen had already gone to roost on the rung of a stool in a dark corner of the room, while the much-loved goat stood munching grass at Norah's elbow.

The child's mother did not seem troubled in the least by these things. She was busy as busy could be, giving hot potatoes and slices of bread to Mike and Joe, Norah and Katie, while she trotted baby Patsy on her knee.

But when the whole flock of geese came running and flying into the hut for their share of the family supper, it was a little too much.

"Away with you, noisy creatures!" cried the busy mother. "Away with you! Mike, take the broom and drive them out. Joe, lend a hand and help your brother."

When the room had been cleared of the greedy geese, every one went on eating, until not even a crumb was left on the table.

The girls cleared away the dishes; the boys brought a load of peat into the house, and placed it before the fire to dry for burning; the mother rocked Patsy to Dreamland, and the father smoked his pipe.

Then, when the work was all done, he told the children there was good news.

"What is it, what is it?" they all cried together.

"A letter from our own Maggie, in Ameriky. Sure, what else could the good news be?" said their father. "Listen, and you shall hear it.

"'DEAR FATHER AND MY OWN SWEET MOTHER: – First of all, how are yoursilves and the pigs and all the children? I have a good place, and my mistress is very kind to me. My work is not hard, and I am fast learning the ways of this great country. My wages is now two dollars and a half the week. In the money of good ould Ireland, that is just ten shillin's. By bein' careful since I last wrote ye, I have saved enough to send you two pounds. My master got the money changed for me, he was that kind. What will the money buy yez now? Mother darlint must have two pounds of the best tay, and a new red woollen petticoat. You, father, will have some grand leather boots, and aich of the children must buy something for the remimbrance of the sister Maggie far across the great say.

"'Good-bye, and may the blissings of Hiven fall upon ye.

"'MAGGIE O'NEIL.'"

As he came to the end of the letter, every one was silent for a moment. The mother wiped away some tears which had fallen upon her cheek, and her husband cleared his throat.

Two pounds! It seemed like a fortune to the little family. It was nearly enough to pay the year's rent.

"But the pigs are doing well, and, if they keep on, there will be no trouble when rent time comes," said the father, as they sat talking the matter over. "The price of the pigs will be enough for the rint, I'm thinkin'. It shall be as Maggie said. Let the childer go to bed and dream of the fine things they will see in the town when they go shopping."

Somehow or other the children were all stowed away for the night in the small room next the kitchen, and Norah was soon sound asleep, and dreaming a most wonderful dream.

It seemed in her dream that the goat was harnessed to the jaunting-car belonging to the father of her friend Molly. He was a very, very big goat in the dream, and he looked really handsome, as he capered down the lane, carrying the whole family to market.

Norah's pet chicken was going to see the sights, for he was perched on the goat's head. The old mother pig ran by his side, and the baby pigs, with their curly tails high up in the air, were trying their best to keep up. Everybody was laughing and singing to the tune of an Irish jig that Norah's father was playing on the bagpipes.